Just a heads up for all of you who have been anxiously waiting in your fallout shelters for Adobe to patch that nasty zero-day exploit. Adobe has announced that tomorrow it will be dishing out an update that should resolve the matter where Flash is concerned. As for Acrobat and Reader, the two other Adobe products that are vulnerable, both will have their quarterly security date bumped up by two weeks meaning that this whole mess should be resolved by the 29th of June.

Yesterday, Adobe announced that a zero-day exploit exists in Flash 10.0.45.2 and earlier, as well as Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x. The company website explains:

…(CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.

The zero-day exploit, without question, is the mother of all vulnerabilities. A recent report put the black market price tag of a good zero-day exploit — on that can be widely distributed — at just north of $50,000. Governments and private security firms have been rumored to pay more than quadruple that figure on the “white market” if the vulnerability is severe enough. We’ve got the complete security bulletin, with mitigation instructions, queued up for you after the bounce. More →

In an economic climate such as the one we’re currently experiencing, we’re sure that Sun Microsystems is wishing they could say, “No takesies-backsies!” For the past few weeks, it seemed like everyone was on the edge of their seat waiting to see what would happen with IBM’s offer Sun. On Sunday, everything came to a halt when IBM withdrew a hefty $7.5 billion bid for the computer and software manufacturer. Sun became apparently picky when the sum ($9.40 per share instead of the $9.55 offer from the prior week) and details of the negotiations didn’t quite meet their tastes. Now the company could be facing a rough future if IBM can’t find a way to please and purchase it. In the meantime, Sun’s stock prices could continue to drop as they further their quest to find a buyer.